Opening joint sessions in civil case mediations, while understudied, are a key element in the mediation process. Here mediators set the tone of the mediation by delineating the goals of mediation, proffering advice to the disputants, and indicating which strategy they will subsequently use. We...

This study investigates why mediators' assertive strategies — evaluative and directive — did not generate high disputant dissatisfaction when they produced agreements. We thoroughly investigated the transcripts from fifty cases in which the mediators had used assertive strategies and...